Spanish Verbs Made Simple(r) - Hillcrest Elementary

in the verbal system. This is illustrated by the following examples, where the
stressed syllable is shown in bold:
a•mo Te amo. “I love you.”
a•mo Te amó. “He loved you.”
can•te ¡Cante la canción! “(You, usted) sing the song!”
can•te Canté la canción. “I sang the song.”
ter•mi•no termino “I finish”
ter•mi•no terminó “he finished”
ter•mi•no término “term”, “limit”
ma•mas Todas las mamás son invitadas. “All the mothers are invited.”
ma•mas Todas las mamas son invitadas. “All the breasts are invited.”
The syllable on which the stress 4 falls is determined according to the following
general rule:
In the absence of a written accent mark, words ending in
(a) a consonant other than n or s are stressed on the last syllable;
(b) n, s, or a vowel are stressed on the next-to-last syllable.
When the stress accent does not fall on the “expected” syllable, it is
marked by placing a written accent mark (tilde, in Spanish) over the
vowel in the stressed syllable.The letter y is treated as a consonant.
It is thus necessary to distinguish between the stress accent, which every word has,
and the written accent which only occurs when the stress accent does not fall on
the “expected” syllable.
The above rule does not cover the very tricky issue of vowel combinations,
which can be pronounced either as part of separate syllables or as elements of a
diphthong. This issue will be addressed in Chapter 7.
Irregular Verbs
In Spanish, as in most languages, a “Murphy’s law of verbs” seems to hold:
1. Regular verbs are infrequently used.
2. Frequently used verbs are irregular.
4 We will use the terms stress and stress accent interchangeably.
INTRODUCTION 5